On Yoga & Commitment-Phobia

I went to a new yoga studio yesterday, and found the class I took there quite refreshing. It wasn't so much that the teacher was super amazing - she really wasn't - as that the class she taught was so calm and therapeutic. Of course, there were some challenging poses; any yoga pose is challenging when you bring your full physical and mental attention to it. But there was also meditation to start and end class, and a feeling of calm and sensitivity in the room that made its way into my mind and body. I was able to be present in a way that I have not been in a yoga class (or anywhere else) in quite some time.

The studio I normally go to holds one-hour classes that are incredibly intense from a physical perspective. They are crowded - mats are laid down edge to edge like the patches of a room-sized quilt - and it's hard not to feel as if you're at some kind of yoga revival. I don't mean to be overly critical or dismissive of this approach: it draws a huge crowd and is definitely an intense workout. I'm just not sure that an intense workout is what I'm really looking for from yoga anymore.

What am I looking for, and am I going to find it in yoga? I'm not sure, although I have been consistently drawn to yoga for ten years now, though it's never really found a comfortable niche in my life. I have always been drawn to its spiritual and philosophical aspects, but never enough so to really dedicate myself to their exploration beyond reading a popular book or two. I suppose I'm a yoga commitment-phobe: I want the benefits of a cursory relationship with yoga - strength, flexibility, a toned body - without all the intellectual and spiritual work of delving into its literary and meditative teachings.

Maybe this speaks to a larger issue I struggle with: a hesitancy to believe thoroughly in anything. I try to avoid dogma in its many forms, even when disguised by things I believe in, like nature and science. Does this hesitancy keep me from fully investing myself in a course of study and spiritual development? Or am I simply, as I sometimes think, just lazy? Am I just satisfied enough with the way things stand that I don't feel any need to dedicate a lot of time to profoundly changing my life - a life, I must say, that I'm very happy with?

Whatever the case, the cursory relationship I've had so far with yoga no longer seems to be enough, and in some way, I desire to go deeper. This may mean facing some of my own assumptions head-on: after all, I realize there is plenty of room for critical thought when one is engaged in studying philosophy or in developing a spiritual practice.  It's just a matter of owning up to the rigorous work that represents, instead of brushing the whole thing off as dogma and therefore not worthy of my time and serious contemplation.  It's just a matter of deciding to invest - an always risky, often rewarding, proposition.  

Run, Run, Run, Awaaaay....

Crossing the finish line, November 2009.

In November of 2009, I ran my first half marathon - 13.1 rolling miles through the Tucson foothills. It was a great experience except for one thing: a nagging pain in my left foot that started a few weeks before the race and had become much worse by the time I finished it.

Last week, in April of 2011, I made a decision to stop running because of the continuing pain in my foot. Already, only a few days later, it seems absurd that I spent eighteen months provoking an injury that was at worst very painful, and at best, fairly painful. But I was driven by a rigid need for routine and a growing addiction to running. And really, is addiction too strong a word when you continue to do something with the full knowledge that it is hurting you with every step?

So what finally made me stop? For one thing, my foot was beginning to bother me during other activities that I actually value more than running, such as hiking. For another, J and I have just made the big decision to through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013, and I know that I have to start that journey 100% healthy. 

But there was something deeper at work, too. Lately, I just feel compelled to move more slowly, more gently, more kindly through my life. Running had become an unkindness to myself, something that was brutal on my body. It in turn led to other brutal habits, such overeating, for which I then felt ashamed, and resolved to counter with - you guessed it - more running. It was a way to both impose and forgo control of myself: a vicious cycle.

What I've found since I've stopped running is that I'm able to be more moderate in all my habits, to be more physically and emotionally kind to myself. My natural inclination is toward the extreme (I swam four hours a day, six days a week as a teenager), but the older I get, the less I care about being extremely fit and extremely hard core. I'm amazed now by how much time and energy I have for other things - riding my bike, hiking, yoga, gardening - and that variety and energy are so refreshing. It's not so much that running occupied a lot of my time, but rather that it took up a lot of my mental space to levy that type of self-discipline. Which isn't always a bad thing; it just isn't right for me anymore.

It's hard to know, though, in a culture that proclaims to value hard work above almost everything else, just how disciplined one should be. A nice house, a fancy job title, a rock-hard body: all of these things represent our ability to discipline ourselves, to take "hard work" to extremes, to deny pleasure. On the other hand, daily kindnesses to ourselves - a long walk at sunset, a good glass of wine with a square of dark chocolate, time spent fully focused on family and friends - aren't well symbolized by material things, and so are often deemed frivolous or extraneous to the image we present to others and the blurry lens through which we judge ourselves.

I recently had a small crisis of faith (and by small, I mean resolved within the course of a single yoga class) during which I contemplated the notion that I'm not really a true believer in anything.  I'd like to say I'm skeptical by nature, but it's more by experience. I'm wary of anything dogmatic, anything that requires some kind of deep sacrifice or adherence to a certain lifestyle or belief system. So what actually guides my life? I wondered as I shifted back into downward-facing dog. And then I realized that it can actually be easily summed up in one word: kindness. Kindness to others, to the planet, to our fellow creatures. Most of all, kindness to self, which seems to be the most difficult and essential sort to cultivate. 

I was convinced that my daily habit of running was a kindness to myself, but at some point it shifted to harmful dogma, something I did because I felt I had to. Doubtless it will be replaced by something else, and the ongoing quest for balance will continue. But here in this moment, I feel remarkably kind, and free.